Looking for a Fh Rubber

[Zwill]

This is overstated. There is some value to play players below your level or players with weird styles once in a while. But doing it too often or almost exclusively except as part of regular training will degrade your level. You need quality opponents who play with the right speed and quality to stay sharp. Playing inconsistent players who are too slow will lead to forming bad habits. But that is why when you can find a better player to play you, you need to show gratitude and find ways to reward them. Many people take it for granted and don't understand what to do in those situations - they don't understand that they benefit just by hitting with the better player and should try to do everything the better player asks so that the better player wants to repeat the experience or finds value in it. The better player usually doesn't want your power, he wants your control.

I don't disagree, but also remember when the Indian women team made the Chinese look pretty bad?
Playing against weird is needed.

I used to despise playing against penhold ox longpip attackers who used H3 + illegal serves. Now I kind of fancy playing with them sometimes and if I get opponents who have some "material" I am already feeling lucky, when before I just annoyed.

Also this match is pretty darn funny:

 

[ThePongCommenter]

I went to a trainingscamp in germany for 4 days. They all said my technique is fine I should work on my footwork instead. I was training with better players so my playing level was also much better especially on the 2nd day. It has gotten much worse since I am back here again playing with worse players.

Either way it was more of a camp to just train with better players than to get actual detailed feedback. As long as you brought the ball back on the table they were fine with it.

But I do think of joining a different camp somewhere else just don't know where it would be good. We plan to go to London in May so maybe I will go to a club nearby there for a few days.

You probably need specific tips and drills about how to make your footwork better or else that experience seems unproductive. And you can tell a good coach that you don't have high level training partners as part of your regular club and ask them to factor that into their advice.

 

[Zezima]

You probably need specific tips and drills about how to make your footwork better or else that experience seems unproductive. And you can tell a good coach that you don't have high level training partners as part of your regular club and ask them to factor that into their advice.

I won't have one maybe the female player that I am gonna train with can act as my coach since she is 40+ and has played tt for many many years winning almost every single year. I just don't want to be annoying in the first session since I would like to train with her more often.

I tried footwork drills like falkenberg and entire table fh. I can do it although due to my bad CO2 I get exhausted around 3-4min. But these drills are too predictable. And any irregular exercise I start to break my form.

This for example happens a lot. Form completely breaks I never even do such a stroke in training.

whereas I am 0.2sec faster?

And I can hit a topspin with decent quality

If you know drills that I can work on or atleast slowly get better at fixing my problem I am happy to note it down.

Even against the female player she was constantly jamming me. I didn't even get the chance to block properly cuz I was getting it to my elbow or some other places I couldn't properly reach. I don't have those parts in the video.

It's like my positioning is completely wrong. But the way I stand on the table it feels like I am covering most of the table atleast. I guess I am too parallel aswell and don't quite have the skill yet to loop with that stance properly during the match. I could try having my right leg behind my left leg more idk if that would help?

 

[ThePongCommenter]

I won't have one maybe the female player that I am gonna train with can act as my coach since she is 40+ and has played tt for many many years winning almost every single year. I just don't want to be annoying in the first session since I would like to train with her more often.

I tried footwork drills like falkenberg and entire table fh. I can do it although due to my bad CO2 I get exhausted around 3-4min. But these drills are too predictable. And any irregular exercise I start to break my form.

This for example happens a lot. Form completely breaks I never even do such a stroke in training.

whereas I am 0.2sec faster?

And I can hit a topspin with decent quality

If you know drills that I can work on or atleast slowly get better at fixing my problem I am happy to note it down.

Even against the female player she was constantly jamming me. I didn't even get the chance to block properly cuz I was getting it to my elbow or some other places I couldn't properly reach. I don't have those parts in the video.

It's like my positioning is completely wrong. But the way I stand on the table it feels like I am covering most of the table atleast. I guess I am too parallel aswell and don't quite have the skill yet to loop with that stance properly during the match. I could try having my right leg behind my left leg more idk if that would help?

Don't really know where to start with all that but if your form breaks down when doing irregular drills then do them until you can figure out how to get your form to not break down. You are really overcomplicating things that don't need to be complicated. But if you want to receive quality training and coaching you are probably going to have to pay for it and travel may be involved. Otherwise you may need to accept that your only chance to improve significantly is to stop ruling out all the suggestions you get before even trying them and start training like crazy until you figure out what works and leads to improvement.

 

[NextLevel]

I won't have one maybe the female player that I am gonna train with can act as my coach since she is 40+ and has played tt for many many years winning almost every single year. I just don't want to be annoying in the first session since I would like to train with her more often.

I tried footwork drills like falkenberg and entire table fh. I can do it although due to my bad CO2 I get exhausted around 3-4min. But these drills are too predictable. And any irregular exercise I start to break my form.

This for example happens a lot. Form completely breaks I never even do such a stroke in training.

whereas I am 0.2sec faster?

And I can hit a topspin with decent quality

If you know drills that I can work on or atleast slowly get better at fixing my problem I am happy to note it down.

Even against the female player she was constantly jamming me. I didn't even get the chance to block properly cuz I was getting it to my elbow or some other places I couldn't properly reach. I don't have those parts in the video.

It's like my positioning is completely wrong. But the way I stand on the table it feels like I am covering most of the table atleast. I guess I am too parallel aswell and don't quite have the skill yet to loop with that stance properly during the match. I could try having my right leg behind my left leg more idk if that would help?

Your form is supposed to break down when you start anything in TT, you ae not supposed to start out being good at it, and you may never really even get good at it, you just have to get better at it. This is the hurdle people who focus on good looking technique sometimes never cross, they don't realize that struggling can improve your game even when things are not working because your body tries to develop tools to reduce the struggling over time. Of course, you can do it incrementally and never break down through any of it, but how long that takes and what the result will be, good luck especially since you can't find a coach to take you through it at the pace you want. But struggling is part of good table tennis or improving at anything meaningful if done correctly. In fact, you might practice with the lady if you are fortunate for a year or more and never beat her, but your level might go up 100 points, This can happen you know.

TT is not something you learn with theory, TT is something you learn through adaptation.

 

[Zezima]

Your form is supposed to break down when you start anything in TT, you ae not supposed to start out being good at it, and you may never really even get good at it, you just have to get better at it. This is the hurdle people who focus on good looking technique sometimes never cross, they don't realize that struggling can improve your game even when things are not working because your body tries to develop tools to reduce the struggling over time. Of course, you can do it incrementally and never break down through any of it, but how long that takes and what the result will be, good luck especially since you can't find a coach to take you through it at the pace you want. But struggling is part of good table tennis or improving at anything meaningful if done correctly. In fact, you might practice with the lady if you are fortunate for a year or more and never beat her, but your level might go up 100 points, This can happen you know.

TT is not something you learn with theory, TT is something you learn through adaptation.

I know I am just talking about how to get better at this. I have been playing for 9 years and it feels like I am not making much progress when it comes to anticipation and hitting offensive under pressure. I think my training method was fine since I got to 1500 by training with only 1000-1200. But from now on I need to change my trainingsession and train different aspects to hit the next level

 

[Nash77]

The problem is better players don't want to play with lower level player. They also want to play with better players

I've found that if the better players see that you're serious about getting better - they often find some time to help you out.

 

[RefereeNumber2]

I don't have any specific advice that other haven't already given, but I just wanted to chime in that the premise of this thread is a prime example of why I would advise beginning/developing players to avoid spending time on this forum as much as possible.

Spending a lot of time reading this forum will tend to teach you to think equipment matters way more than it does. Unless you already come in with a healthy degree of skepticism about equipment-focused advice and reviews (which is unlikely to be the case for beginners), you are going to start attaching way more consequence to your equipment than is appropriate.

The real problem arises when you're practicing or playing, and all of your attention is on your equipment (is my rubber too hard/soft, is my blade to stiff/flexible, do I have enough dwell time, etc.) instead of on the fundamentals like, "am I recovering and moving my feet between shots?" or "am I timing my movement and swing appropriately?"

When players miss, it almost never has anything to do with their equipment. It's usually something simple like being so stiff they aren't moving their feet, or feeling rushed and reaching out/hitting too early, or maybe gripping the racket too tightly to be able to feel the ball/accelerate their hand. If you get in the mindset that the problem is your equipment, you are just distracting yourself from the things that actually matter.

It's natural to make occasional technical mistakes, especially in matches...at some level the match is about stressing your opponent's technique enough to force them into mistakes, and better players are those who can maintain stable technique under increasingly greater strain.

The first step to improvement is recognizing what technical mistakes you're making and when. The next step is figuring out how to make that mistake fewer times and in rarer circumstances. As long as you are seriously focused on that goal, you can use whatever equipment you please, and it's not going to make much difference, if any. Good coaching can help, but it requires some participation/effort on the part of the student. If you think about equipment before technique, then you won't even make it past the first step no matter who your coach is.

 

[MORTtheORT]

I don't have any specific advice that other haven't already given, but I just wanted to chime in that the premise of this thread is a prime example of why I would advise beginning/developing players to avoid spending time on this forum as much as possible.

Spending a lot of time reading this forum will tend to teach you to think equipment matters way more than it does. Unless you already come in with a healthy degree of skepticism about equipment-focused advice and reviews (which is unlikely to be the case for beginners), you are going to start attaching way more consequence to your equipment than is appropriate.

The real problem arises when you're practicing or playing, and all of your attention is on your equipment (is my rubber too hard/soft, is my blade to stiff/flexible, do I have enough dwell time, etc.) instead of on the fundamentals like, "am I recovering and moving my feet between shots?" or "am I timing my movement and swing appropriately?"

When players miss, it almost never has anything to do with their equipment. It's usually something simple like being so stiff they aren't moving their feet, or feeling rushed and reaching out/hitting too early, or maybe gripping the racket too tightly to be able to feel the ball/accelerate their hand. If you get in the mindset that the problem is your equipment, you are just distracting yourself from the things that actually matter.

It's natural to make occasional technical mistakes, especially in matches...at some level the match is about stressing your opponent's technique enough to force them into mistakes, and better players are those who can maintain stable technique under increasingly greater strain.

The first step to improvement is recognizing what technical mistakes you're making and when. The next step is figuring out how to make that mistake fewer times and in rarer circumstances. As long as you are seriously focused on that goal, you can use whatever equipment you please, and it's not going to make much difference, if any. Good coaching can help, but it requires some participation/effort on the part of the student. If you think about equipment before technique, then you won't even make it past the first step no matter who your coach is.

Yep, and because of this they keep buying more and more advanced gear and all MAX to the point that it is holds then back.

 

[MORTtheORT]

I don't disagree, but also remember when the Indian women team made the Chinese look pretty bad?
Playing against weird is needed.

I used to despise playing against penhold ox longpip attackers who used H3 + illegal serves. Now I kind of fancy playing with them sometimes and if I get opponents who have some "material" I am already feeling lucky, when before I just annoyed.

Also this match is pretty darn funny:

Haha yes this is a funny video. He does really good videos this guy but this was one of those match for him.....we have all left a match internally blowing up like this.

I agree about having to play weird and what you don't like. I think it is a mistake of players who avoid that difficult long pips players etc. If you want to improve you have to take the challenge head on.

One of our players is a 2200 range long pips players who is very aggressive with his cannon like FH. I am almost certain he is double jointed as he has crazy long pips attack that make no sense. Playing him weekly has been amazing for my game as he makes other long pips and strange players look easy now. Well worth the effort.

 

[NextLevel]

Haha yes this is a funny video. He does really good videos this guy but this was one of those match for him.....we have all left a match internally blowing up like this.

I agree about having to play weird and what you don't like. I think it is a mistake of players who avoid that difficult long pips players etc. If you want to improve you have to take the challenge head on.

One of our players is a 2200 range long pips players who is very aggressive with his cannon like FH. I am almost certain he is double jointed as he has crazy long pips attack that make no sense. Playing him weekly has been amazing for my game as he makes other long pips and strange players look easy now. Well worth the effort.

It's one of the unspoken secrets of TT. You have a great and tricky server in your club, and you struggle with the serves but get tolerably bad at returning his serves. Then you go to a tournament and you face a tricky server with a similar serve. And after a couple of serves, you go - this guy is not better than the tricky server at my club, I got this. And after he has beaten everyone else, you win 3-1 and people go "how the hell did you return that guy's serve?" You tell them "We have a 2200 player who uses the same serve at my club and no one likes to play him so he plays with me. Even though I am 1500, I have gotten better at returning his serve. And now an 1800 player wants to use that serve to beat me? No way!"

 

[MORTtheORT]

It's one of the unspoken secrets of TT. You have a great and tricky server in your club, and you struggle with the serves but get tolerably bad at returning his serves. Then you go to a tournament and you face a tricky server with a similar serve. And after a couple of serves, you go - this guy is not better than the tricky server at my club, I got this. And after he has beaten everyone else, you win 3-1 and people go "how the hell did you return that guy's serve?" You tell them "We have a 2200 player who uses the same serve at my club and no one likes to play him so he plays with me. Even though I am 1500, I have gotten better at returning his serve. And now an 1800 player wants to use that serve to beat me? No way!"

100%

 

[NetProphet]

It's one of the unspoken secrets of TT. You have a great and tricky server in your club, and you struggle with the serves but get tolerably bad at returning his serves. Then you go to a tournament and you face a tricky server with a similar serve. And after a couple of serves, you go - this guy is not better than the tricky server at my club, I got this. And after he has beaten everyone else, you win 3-1 and people go "how the hell did you return that guy's serve?" You tell them "We have a 2200 player who uses the same serve at my club and no one likes to play him so he plays with me. Even though I am 1500, I have gotten better at returning his serve. And now an 1800 player wants to use that serve to beat me? No way!"

Yes, we have one of those 😂
Not a 2200 level player but damn his serves are a b!tch, for everyone!

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

Club level tricky servers usually have poor footwork or rally skill. They rely so much on their serves that they diminish other aspect. Once they meet a player who can return their serves, their whole game collapses.

 

[NextLevel]

The first step to improvement is recognizing what technical mistakes you're making and when. The next step is figuring out how to make that mistake fewer times and in rarer circumstances. As long as you are seriously focused on that goal, you can use whatever equipment you please, and it's not going to make much difference, if any. Good coaching can help, but it requires some participation/effort on the part of the student. If you think about equipment before technique, then you won't even make it past the first step no matter who your coach is.

I would argue that many "good coaches" don't even take these steps in the context of real points and hence their students, getting generic coaching not tied to improving technique in the context of real points, tend to improve their match results more slowly. But when you combine this process with improving your technical solutions in the context of how the points you lose (or win inefficiently) evolve, you get a very potent combination that leads to rapid improvement.

 

[Zezima]

I don't have any specific advice that other haven't already given, but I just wanted to chime in that the premise of this thread is a prime example of why I would advise beginning/developing players to avoid spending time on this forum as much as possible.

Spending a lot of time reading this forum will tend to teach you to think equipment matters way more than it does. Unless you already come in with a healthy degree of skepticism about equipment-focused advice and reviews (which is unlikely to be the case for beginners), you are going to start attaching way more consequence to your equipment than is appropriate.

The real problem arises when you're practicing or playing, and all of your attention is on your equipment (is my rubber too hard/soft, is my blade to stiff/flexible, do I have enough dwell time, etc.) instead of on the fundamentals like, "am I recovering and moving my feet between shots?" or "am I timing my movement and swing appropriately?"

When players miss, it almost never has anything to do with their equipment. It's usually something simple like being so stiff they aren't moving their feet, or feeling rushed and reaching out/hitting too early, or maybe gripping the racket too tightly to be able to feel the ball/accelerate their hand. If you get in the mindset that the problem is your equipment, you are just distracting yourself from the things that actually matter.

It's natural to make occasional technical mistakes, especially in matches...at some level the match is about stressing your opponent's technique enough to force them into mistakes, and better players are those who can maintain stable technique under increasingly greater strain.

The first step to improvement is recognizing what technical mistakes you're making and when. The next step is figuring out how to make that mistake fewer times and in rarer circumstances. As long as you are seriously focused on that goal, you can use whatever equipment you please, and it's not going to make much difference, if any. Good coaching can help, but it requires some participation/effort on the part of the student. If you think about equipment before technique, then you won't even make it past the first step no matter who your coach is.

You make it sound like I blame my equipment during practise sessions which is not the case if you have followed some earlier threads of mine.
Actually more people were commenting about my equipment more than I did or wanted (wanted to talk more about the technical aspect)

Now I realize I am using d09c properties maybe in 2-3shots in the entire match so I think its not worth to keep this rubber. And even though I want to slow on this department people go hunt against me just because out of 1000 rubbers I don't want to play with R7?

My goal is to focus on training again it's just that now I realize it's time to take a step back on the rubber department aswell since I already "downgraded" my blade from W968 to Korbel.

And instead we have 5 different topics being discussed instead of just suggesting me a forehand rubber I might like.

more than half of the last 10 posts or so are not even about the question I asked in this post people drifting offtopic when they should be talking in private or open up a new thread.

Also I don't mind if people suggest me to get coaching since not everyone knows my situation I am in and that I have no opportunities unless they followed me around for a while. But I would have appreciated more to get proper recommendations so I could decide in the end for one and close this thread.

Right now I tend towards T19 but want to do some research on t05 fx and so on. I am not entirely convinced if T19 gives me more dwell than g1 and that softer feeling where I can feel the ball sinking into the rubber. All I know is even g09c and g1 feels hard still. tldr: a Rubber that gives me that rewarding feeling when hitting a good topspin at medium pace aswell

 

[NextLevel]

You make it sound like I blame my equipment during practise sessions which is not the case if you have followed some earlier threads of mine.
Actually more people were commenting about my equipment more than I did or wanted (wanted to talk more about the technical aspect)

Now I realize I am using d09c properties maybe in 2-3shots in the entire match so I think its not worth to keep this rubber. And even though I want to slow on this department people go hunt against me just because out of 1000 rubbers I don't want to play with R7?

My goal is to focus on training again it's just that now I realize it's time to take a step back on the rubber department aswell since I already "downgraded" my blade from W968 to Korbel.

And instead we have 5 different topics being discussed instead of just suggesting me a forehand rubber I might like.

more than half of the last 10 posts or so are not even about the question I asked in this post people drifting offtopic when they should be talking in private or open up a new thread.

Also I don't mind if people suggest me to get coaching since not everyone knows my situation I am in and that I have no opportunities unless they followed me around for a while. But I would have appreciated more to get proper recommendations so I could decide in the end for one and close this thread.

Right now I tend towards T19 but want to do some research on t05 fx and so on. I am not entirely convinced if T19 gives me more dwell than g1 and that softer feeling where I can feel the ball sinking into the rubber. All I know is even g09c and g1 feels hard still. tldr: a Rubber that gives me that rewarding feeling when hitting a good topspin at medium pace aswell

Have you tested the rubbers that people have recommended to you and provided feedback?

 

[Souther]

You make it sound like I blame my equipment during practise sessions which is not the case if you have followed some earlier threads of mine.
Actually more people were commenting about my equipment more than I did or wanted (wanted to talk more about the technical aspect)

Now I realize I am using d09c properties maybe in 2-3shots in the entire match so I think its not worth to keep this rubber. And even though I want to slow on this department people go hunt against me just because out of 1000 rubbers I don't want to play with R7?

My goal is to focus on training again it's just that now I realize it's time to take a step back on the rubber department aswell since I already "downgraded" my blade from W968 to Korbel.

And instead we have 5 different topics being discussed instead of just suggesting me a forehand rubber I might like.

more than half of the last 10 posts or so are not even about the question I asked in this post people drifting offtopic when they should be talking in private or open up a new thread.

Also I don't mind if people suggest me to get coaching since not everyone knows my situation I am in and that I have no opportunities unless they followed me around for a while. But I would have appreciated more to get proper recommendations so I could decide in the end for one and close this thread.

Right now I tend towards T19 but want to do some research on t05 fx and so on. I am not entirely convinced if T19 gives me more dwell than g1 and that softer feeling where I can feel the ball sinking into the rubber. All I know is even g09c and g1 feels hard still. tldr: a Rubber that gives me that rewarding feeling when hitting a good topspin at medium pace aswell

This is like asking other people what flavor ice cream should you choose at the ice cream shop. Everyone will suggest their own favorite, but that still doesn't mean you'll like it. You can say you like beef prepared this way, or pork prepared that way, and people can try to associate the appropriate ice cream flavor that you might like. But they still will never know what you like until you try the flavors yourself.

If you want my answer, I will say H3 neo national blue sponge 40 degrees. To me it's not hard or slow at all and way too fast even unboosted. Straight out of the package, it had little bounce, but it woke up as I played more and more. The feel and control is superb with the clipper blade... essentially Ma Long's blade without the carbon. Will you like it? I don't know. If you played with it for just a few hours, probably not. If you stuck with it for a few years, then I don't think you will look for any other rubber ever again.

edit: I'm not trying to promote H3. Feel free to substitute any other rubber in place of H3 above. My point remains the same.

 

[ThePongCommenter]

And instead we have 5 different topics being discussed instead of just suggesting me a forehand rubber I might like.

more than half of the last 10 posts or so are not even about the question I asked in this post people drifting offtopic when they should be talking in private or open up a new thread.

Your incessant ramblings frequently go off topic and include lots of information that nobody needed to know, so you don't get to demand that people provide you the exact form of discussion you want exactly how you want it every time you open a new thread for the latest thought that came through your head.

You know all the rubbers that are out there within the range of what you're now looking for. Choose one.

 

[Amayzde]

I only tried R48 it was still hard. Tbh with my technique it doesn't make a whole difference if I play with R48 or a d09c hard rubber. They all feel the same hardness. One part is because I am not really activating the sponge and looped with topsheet only. So I wonder if I will feel a difference now. But somehow I want to go for 45 to further see and feel that difference. Later on I can still decide to stay around 45 or realize ok now I understand and clearly see why I have to go for a harder rubber. Right now I have been playing with these hard rubbers without really grasping why a soft rubber would be bad.

I am also not sure about the linear characteristic. I think what could work aswell would be a kick effect so nonlinearity if I hit the ball hard. Like as if I turned on turbo and get 10-20% additional speed when hitting through the sponge. The dopamine I would get would make me play those shots more frequently. Because I realized playing rubbers like h3n 39° does the opposite effect. It felt so draining to loop and get speed into the ball that I rather wanted to do a different stroke (more slapping to make the ball go faster and still not a good feeling)

This is so contradicting. You want a softer rubber than 09C, but you dont feel the difference between 09C and R48. Do you know how much softer R48 already is?? If you dont feel the difference in these, then R45 isnt going to give you what you are looking for.

Now I realize I am using d09c properties maybe in 2-3shots in the entire match so I think its not worth to keep this rubber. And even though I want to slow on this department people go hunt against me just because out of 1000 rubbers I don't want to play with R7?

I dont think you play nessecarly bad with 09C looking at your footage. But I do agree that the rubber is not very forgiving if you dont hit the ball properly. So if you wanna change to a rubber thats more stable and forgiving then my reccomendations still stand: G1 and/or R7 on either side. These rubbers have been working for over 15 years now. G1 has been THE top selling rubber on TT11 ever since it came out. So if they work for everyone else, they should work for you too.

Rasanters are also a good pick, Im sure the R45, R47 and R48 will all work once you get used to them. Maybe try NUZN 45 or 48 if you are desperate for something new. But other than that: stop looking, stop arguing. Take it or leave it. I have no intention to 'hunt you down' with this, but please just dont overthink this too much.